Margaret Cho on the go

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Margaret Cho likes to keep a full calendar. Wrapped around her recent three wild weeks on “Dancing With the Stars,” the former San Franciscan promoted “Cho-Dependent” — her debut album as a singer-songwriter — and continued her comedy tour across the nation. She appears at the Nob Hill Masonic Center on Saturday.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Cho says about the schedule, which includes planning for the third season of “Drop Dead Diva,” her Lifetime series shot in Georgia, and making new videos for the album such as “Lice,” which was inspired by a trip to Morocco last year.

Is the whirlwind of activity some form of artistic ADD?

“Kind of,” she says. “I guess there’s an element of that, but also a lot of things just sort of happened at once. It’s a busy time, which makes it perfect because I love working. I love recording and writing shows and being on the road and acting, so for me it’s all great.”

Cho’s teenage years were spent here, in her parents’ bookstore on Polk Street.

“Everything that forms my worldview comes from San Francisco,” she says. “Getting tattooed is all about being from San Francisco. I grew up with a lot of people who were being tattooed by Ed Hardy in the late ’80s and ’90s, so I came back and got tattooed by Ed Hardy. That was an important thing.”

For many, the act of being tattooed is a form of reclaiming the body.

“There’s an element of that,” Cho says. “It’s also kind of about marking your body — like, ‘This is so that I can identify it later,’” she adds, laughing.

“Some of it is about, ‘I’ve been in this skin for a while now. I’m gonna make some modifications.’ So it’s about sprucing things up, ya know, like a remodel.”

So far, she regrets none of the improvements: “Everything I’ve got is kind of superdecorative and it all goes together.”

A mainstay of Cho’s standup comedy is riffing on her mother.

“There’s a lot of her in this show,” says Cho, adding that the portrayal is accurate. “She really does talk like that. It’s not an exaggeration — at all.”

The Korean-American daughter and one-time television “All American Girl” does not think she has ever gone too far with her maternal routines.

“She thinks it’s funny and it’s mostly based on something she’s actually done or said,” Cho says of her mother. “So it’s not like she can come back and claim that it’s offensive because it’s actually just true.”

About The Author

Bio:Robert Sokol is the editor at BAYSTAGES, the creative director at VIA MEDIA, and a lifelong arts supporter. Diva wrangler, cinefiler, and occasional saloon singer, he has been touching showbiz all his life. (So far no restraining orders have been issued!)...Robert Sokol is the editor at BAYSTAGES, the creative director at VIA MEDIA, and a lifelong arts supporter. Diva wrangler, cinefiler, and occasional saloon singer, he has been touching showbiz all his life. (So far no restraining orders have been issued!) more